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Ray Harryhausen
| image = File:Ray Harryhausen.jpg | imagewidth = 225px | known aliases = Raymond Harryhausen | roles = Special effects artist; Producer | place of birth = Los Angeles, California | gender = | year of birth = June 29th, 1920 | year of death = May 7th, 2013 | first appearance = Mighty Joe Young (1949) }} Raymond Harryhausen is a special effects artist and film producer born in Los Angeles, California on June 29th, 1920. Harryhausen is best known for his pioneering work in the field of stop-motion animation. Career After having seen King Kong for the first of many times in 1933, Harryhausen spent his early years experimenting in the production of animated shorts, inspired by the burgeoning science fiction literary genre of the period. A friend arranged a meeting with Harryhausen's idol, Willis O'Brien, animator of King Kong. O'Brien critiqued Harryhausen's early models and inspired Harryhausen to take classes in graphic arts and sculpture to hone his skills. Harryhausen became friends with an aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury, with similar enthusiasms. Bradbury and Harryhausen joined a. L.A. science fiction club formed by Forrest J. Ackerman in 1939 and the three became lifelong friends. Harryhausen's first major film work was 1949's adventure movie Mighty Joe Young. Ray and fellow animator Willis O'Brien won Best Special Effects category at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for that year. Harryhausen's first solo-feature film work came in 1953 when he took on the animation chores for the giant monster in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The film became a major international box-office hit for Warner Brothers Pictures. It was on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms that Harryhausen first used a technique that split the background and foreground of pre-shot live action footage into two separate pieces of film. The background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated in front of it, rephotographed with an animation-capable camera to combine those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in the previously blacked out area. This created the effect that the animated model was "sandwiched" in between the two live action elements, right into the final live action scene. Many shots were embellished with additional elements painted on glass, also sandwiched in between the rear screen and camera, as O'Brien had done on his films. Harryhausen soon met and began a fruitful partnership with producer Charles H. Schneer, who was working with the Sam Katzman B-picture unit of Columbia Pictures. Their first tandem project was It Came from Beneath the Sea about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. It was a box-office success, quickly followed by Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, set in Washington, D.C. -- one of the best of the alien invasion films of the 1950s, and also a box office hit. Harryhausen returned to Columbia and Charles Schneer to make 20 Million Miles to Earth, a film about an American spaceship returning from Venus that crashes into the ocean near Italy, releasing an on-board alien egg specimen which washes up on shore and soon hatches a creature that, in Earth's atmosphere, rapidly grows to gigantic size and terrifies Rome. Harryhausen refined and improved his already-considerable ability at establishing emotional characterizations in the face of his Venusian Ymir model, creating yet another international box-office hit film. Harryhausen continued his life-long friendship with Ray Bradbury. Another long-time close friend was "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine editor, book writer, and sci-fi collector Forrest J. Ackerman (who loaned Harryhausen his photos of King Kong in 1933, right after Harryhausen had seen the film for the first time). Harryhausen also maintained his friendships with his long-time producer, Charles H. Schneer, who lived next door to him in a suburb of London, and with model animation protege, Jim Danforth, still living in the Los Angeles area. Body of work Film Notes & Trivia * Ray Harryhausen's work in stop-motion animation inspired a legion of filmmakers including notable horror directors such as James Cameron, Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg and Sam Raimi. * Ray Harryhausen made a cameo appearance in 20 Million Miles to Earth as a man feeding the elephant that later scraps with Ymir. External Links * * * at Wikipedia References Category:Special effects artists Category:Producers Category:1920 births Category:2013 deaths